Author: A.T.

As We Build A Superior Species We Cannot Control

THE CASE FOR REGULATION

Hillary nails it in under two minutes.*

RNGE

The stock has fallen back from its 95-cent August high to 53 cents (though up from 15 cents where we bought it), presumably because it plans to host data centers — and everybody is now against data centers. Maybe there’s another reason, but that seems to me the most likely.  Yet here’s the thing:  Everyone’s against data centers near them.  That could make RNGE’s potential sites — abandoned coal mines far from highly populated areas — more valuable, not less.

Hillary is right that we urgently need to regulate A.I.  But that doesn’t mean we won’t need data centers.  

I probably won’t buy more RNGE here because I have a psychological block against buying something once it’s more than tripled (which is why I didn’t buy Berkshire Hathaway, now $794,000 a share, at $300 a share when I first wrote about it) . . . and because the Democrats have all my cash (which will prove to be the best investment I’ve ever made, if we succeed at restoring sanity) . . . and because I already have a gazillion RNGE shares.  But it does strike me as a tempting speculation for money you can truly afford to lose.

*Imagine how different our world would be if Putin had failed to push Trump over the top in 2016.  Hillary would have won not just the popular vote, but also the presidency.  A superbly thoughtful, competent president who would have kept America on the side of Ukraine (along with NATO and Canada, Australia, and the rest of the free world) instead of the side of the barbaric invader (along with his North Korean ally).  But until we get “Nip-Vic” — the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact — it doesn’t matter who gets the most votes.  (See, also: Al Gore.)

 

AI That Builds Itself

But first . . .

HYMC

Tuesday they announced Hycroft Drills New Best Hole Ever and the stock — down from its high of $51 in January to $17 Monday (though up from $2.20 where some of us bought it) — dropped another dollar.  Who knows why.  “Buy on the rumor, sell on the news” perhaps?

Those of us who sold calls against our shares (for example, the $14.50 we got for giving someone the right to pay us $25 for our shares, let alone the $27 some of us got for giving someone the right to buy our shares for $60), have a very nice profit baked in even if the stock drops to zero.  But I’m betting that it won’t.  (I’m buying back the $25 calls for a large tax-deferred profit in my IRA, thinking I might sell them again, at a much higher price, if the stock rebounds.)

Here’s an assessment published last month before the encouraging drilling results were released:  Is Hycroft’s (HYMC) New Look Hiding a Bigger Story Underground?

(And here’s another.)

I’m not suggesting you buy HYMC here; but if like me you already own it with money you can truly afford to lose, I wouldn’t sell, either.

SATURDAY!

Where will YOU be?  Click and scroll down to find a rally near you.

MONDAY!

“Meet” Adam Hamilton for free . . . though I suspect you may be inspired to chip in once you do.  I’m betting he will be the next junior senator from the great state of Kansas.

ANOTHER BILLBOARD

And now . . .

OH, BROTHER 

Matt Shumer: “AI that builds AI could come sooner than expected.”

Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic, now thinks AI that can build its own successor is more likely to arrive in 2027 than 2028.  I’ve followed Jack for years, and I think he’s right. If anything, he might be understating it.  You think AI is improving quickly now? Just wait… this is going to accelerate things even further.

Which is why Tuesday’s episode of “The Daily” is such a poignant must-listen:

When A.I. Comes for Your Purpose in Life.

So listen.

The human species urgently needs exceptionally smart, thoughtful leaders as we invent a species superior to our own  . . .

. . . and would until two years ago have been looking to the United States for much of that leadership.

The billboard above could just as well have substituted “American competence” or “American leadership” for “the American Dream.”

The last line works either way.

 

Fun With The October Surprise

But first . . .

WHO COULD NOT LOVE ELIZABETH WARREN’S DOG?

Adorable (60 seconds).

PLUTOCRACY

Just 15 billionaire families have already contributed $962 million to influence this election.

Their fortunes buy influence. Their influence protects their fortunes.

See: Billionaires Buying Elections: Midterm Edition

It’s time for a New Deal.

SATURDAY!

Where will YOU be?  Click and scroll down to find a rally near you.

And now . . .

THE DREAD OCTOBER SURPRISE

This is so fun.

After reviewing the history of October surprises, former Republican operative Rick Wilson writes, in part:

Which brings us to the Trump regime’s attempt to build several October Surprises, apparently from an Ikea kit missing half the parts and all the instructions.

. . .

The same day Trump was hawking Russian diesel, the Talarico smear imploded like a Trump casino, with roughly the same return for its investors: embarrassment, shame, legal exposure, and the mockery of everyone living in the real world.

A smear that works needs three things: the seed of something real, a messenger people trust, and amplification. Lots of amplification. The Talarico rumor had none of the three. The story was gossamer-thin; its messengers were shifty liars with long track records of being both wrong and lying liars who lie, and their desperation could be smelled from Amarillo.

It’s a pretty good window into the wider MAGA meltdown.

It still might have caught fire, if not for Volodymyr Zelenskyy and those meddling Ukrainian kids blowing up Russian Yandex data centers and knocking Putin’s AI MAGA bot army offline.

That’s the real October Surprise of 2026. The MAGA machine has lost its most powerful ally: Putin’s army of fake Americans who flood every social media zone with shit.

For ten years, the online right ran on a hidden subsidy pumped straight out of the Russian agitprop enterprise. Ever since the St. Petersburg troll farms got into the business in 2016, a shadow chorus of fake patriots with bald eagle avatars and handles like “MAGA Nation” made every half-baked smear look like a grassroots uprising.

Or did.

When Twitter started showing account locations last fall, some of the loudest “American” voices on the right turned out to be posting from Russia, Eastern Europe, Nigeria, Thailand, and South Asia. A lot of Real Americans ™, it seems, have never been within 5,000 miles of the human world, much less the USA. Now, with Ukrainian drones turning Putin’s MAGA server farms into slag, the choir has lost many of its voices. (More will follow. RIP @SexyMAGAMilf69.)

A rumor that would have trended for three days in 2020 now just sits there, a few thousand genuine lunatics talking to each other in a closed loop while normal voters never see it. The reset across Twitter, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok has been remarkable. Tucker, Megyn, Scabby Steve Bannon, Jack Posobiec, and Elon Musk have all watched their reply-guy adoration and their audiences fall through the floor. Some of their most devoted fans, it appears, were a rack of servers outside Moscow.

Without the fake crowd, the real crowd looks like what it always was: small, loud, and irredeemably, spectacularly stupid.

. . .

No one is worse off with the bots crippled and diminished, except MAGA.

MAGA won’t be saved by one dramatic October moment. Increasingly, it looks like it can’t be saved at all.

The reckoning is coming.

It will arrive one ballot at a time, cast by millions of Americans who decided a long time ago that Trump and his enablers deserve the ass-kicking, curb-stomping, Waffle-House-parking-lot can of whupass the voters are about to deliver.

Mother Jones suggests there may be more than a little wishful thinking in the account above. (Drone Strikes Didn’t Take Out a Russian Bot Farm, But We Were Primed to Believe It.)  But they sure would make a welcome target.

Ukraine — are you listening?

 

A Contrasting Pair Of Trios

COULD JESUS BE OUR SAVIOR?

This is trio #1:

Pastor Raphael Warnock

Deacon James Talarico

Pastor Adam Hamilton.  

Warnock occupies the pulpit Martin Luther King, Jr., once did.  Talarico has famously preached that “there’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism.”   Hamilton founded and leads America’s largest United Methodist church.

Their common bond is obvious.

If things go well, there will soon be three true Christian leaders serving in the United States Senate.  (Reverend Warnock is already there.)

I admire people who try to follow Christ’s teachings.  Can that be said of those who extend tax cuts to the rich while cutting health care for the sick and needy?

Who enable the bombing of children, the live-streaming of executions, or scenes like this?  Which is to say: virtually all the Republicans in the Houe and Senate?

Who enable chaos, cruelty, and corruption?

Where others get led astray (see: Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds), these three admirable Christians, Warnock, Talarico, and Hamilton, will add to the Senate chamber some much-needed guidance and grace.

#

BIBLE BONUS: I’ve just listened to Andy Beshear’s Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country.  How did he win the governorship — twice — in a state Trump won by 30 points?  It had a lot to do with living out his faith.

OR ARE WE BEYOND SAVING?

Trio #2:

Putin, whose unprovoked invasion has killed and wounded millions.

Trump, Putin’s admirer.  “Everything he touches dies.”  (See also Timothy Snyder’s latest post: Trump’s Superpower Suicide.)

Netanyahu. Seeking surrender from an enemy sworn to your annihilation is almost entirely opposite from what Putin has done, and the corruption for which Netanyahu stands trial (and of which he not yet been proven guilty) is nothing compared with Trump’s.  But still.  Like Putin and Trump, he’s been no champion of democracy (there were huge anti-Netanyahu protests before October 7).  And, like Putin, he is accused of war crimes.

Putin shapes our policy on Ukraine (going all the way back to Paul Manafort — see Heather Cox Richardson); Netanyahu, in his urging Trump to renege on the Iran nuclear deal followed by his urging to join a war of choice, our policy on Iran.

All three cling to power in part to avoid prosecution.

All three need to go.

 

Kinky Sex

But first . . .

> Rachel Maddow interviews Ari Emanuel.  So fun.   (What brothers these are! Ari–business, Zeke-health, Rahm–government.)  I can’t wait to read Roll The Calls.

> So now, after more than a decade of pretending that he is not associated with Russia . . .  

More on this tomorrow, but it’s a must-read.  Feel free to jump the gun.

Also: Trump’s Russian Diesel Deal: 7 Days of Fuel at What Cost? (2 minutes)

> My ballot’s in the mail.  To check on yours or find your early-voting place, visit Iwillvote.com.

See you this coming Saturday!

And now . . .

Bondage Photos Weren’t Part of the Campaign Plan.

Chris Gallant [is] a Long Island-raised Black Hawk pilot in the Army National Guard who flew choppers during one of his two tours in Kuwait, worked for five years as an air traffic controller at John F. Kennedy International Airport, serves as a volunteer firefighter and is an unabashed gun owner as well as a union man who posed for those photos almost 17 years ago, not because he was manipulated but because he was into it. . . .

It is well known that Republicans — especially those in Congress — have sex only for purposes of reproduction, never recreation; do not fantasize about sex; and certainly do not fantasize about anything kinky.

(Given that an estimated 61% of the adult population watches porn, it may fairly be inferred that they are all be Democrats and Independents.)

Republicans consider having fun with sex shameful and reason enough to vote against Chris Gallant.

Plus, they love that his opponent votes with Trump 95% of the time, which is why things are going so well.

It’s never been easier for Long Islanders to make ends meet; and when they travel abroad (on planes, one hopes, guided into and out of JFK by air traffic controllers who do not enjoy recreational sex) they are proud to say they voted for Trump, winner of the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize.

And yet one wonders.

What if kinky sexual fantasies, or kinky sex itself, were not restricted to progressives and independents?

And while we’re at it — Why Are So Many Anti-LGBTQ Republicans Interested in Queer Sex?  (Did you know that red states record more Google searches for trans porn than blue states?)

Ultimately, it seems to me, it’s about freedom.  Which used to be a conservative value.

The whole point of being an American — the great thing — is that we are granted inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in any damn way we want, and certainly in the privacy of our bedrooms, so long as it’s legal and not hurting anybody else.

Everything Chris has done has been legal and consensual.  What does any of it have to do with the price of gas or groceries?   

And by the way?  Where ARE the unredacted Epstein files? 

Chris has nothing to hide.  Does the Trump?  Was everything HE did legal and consensual? 

Not according to at least one lawsuit he lost.  Or according to that allegation the FBI seemed to take seriously that he required oral sex of an unwilling 13-year-old.

If the freedom-loving conservatives of NY-1 could vote for Trump three times and aren’t comfortable giving him un-checked reign over the next two years, maybe they’ll give Chris a pass on his kinky pics, or even enjoy them.

Kinks aside, Chris has something of an action-hero’s resume.

No bone spurs, he.

 

We’re Gonna Win

Seen in New Jersey (15 seconds).  All part of the big blue wave.

We’re gonna win.

Walter Cronkite (35 seconds) on shutting down “the enemy of the people” — “fake news,” as MAGA calls it.

We have to win.

> Have you checked your voter registration?

> Made a plan to vote early?

> Decided whom to rally with October 17 and where to go for a bite or a beer afterward?  If you can’t find anyone to join you, that’s all the more reason to go — you’ll meet people!  Don’t be shy!  Just compliment someone on their sign, ask them where they’re from — it’s the easiest place in the world to connect.  Plus, walking is good exercise!  And you need some fresh air!

> Are you looking for ways to help?

BONUS ADS

James Tallarico is going to win.  Enjoy this ad (47 seconds).

And guess who’s going to be the next governor of Georgia?  Do you think it will be the woman in this ad (30 seconds) — or the man?

I say again: with your help, we’re gonna win.

 

A Week From Saturday

Where will you be October 17?

So many locations to choose from!

I’ll be at this one.

Which of these signs should I bring (they cost almost nothing)?

Which will you bring?

This two-pack is just ten bucks.  (The second reads: Morons Are Governing America.)

If you forget to buy or make one, no worries — people will share.

You’re not a marcher and neither am I, but this is different.

I’ve been to all three NO KINGS rallies — they’re fun!

Corral everyone you know to join you for NO KINGS: VOTE EARLY. 

A little inconvenient, to be sure.  But not as inconvenient as fighting fascism 85 years ago.

Are you registered to vote?  Is your ballot in the mail?  Check here to see.

BONUS

Fareed Zakaria’s take:

Why regulating AI could help America beat China

It strikes me as bizarre that today in the United States, a new pill to treat heartburn would have to go through months or even years of government approvals and testing before being released to the public. But the most powerful technology ever developed — capable of breaking into banks, shutting down power grids or helping build bioweapons — can be released without even a preliminary government review.

We are having a collective failure of imagination about artificial intelligence. While many closest to the technology have issued grave warnings and urged oversight, it doesn’t seem to register as a major public concern. Congress has, of course, so far abdicated its role as lawmaker, and the Trump administration is delighted to let the industry regulate itself. . . .